It was written like a non-fiction work (every acronym or slightly unusual word was then explained in brackets, frequently quite unnecessarily), and the "exciting" scenes were told in a completely matter-of-fact way, losing any sense of tension. I had heard of this book before I saw the film based on it but it was only after seeing the movie reently that I decided to read it. Another thing worth noting too - in both cases - is the different treatment given to the story between the book and the film. It is a sad fact of life that “in democratic societies that there are no-go areas where crime thrives and innocent citizens are preyed upon yet where the police are powerless to act.

Like a number of other readers, I came to this book via the movie, which was such a success that it caused the author and the publisher to change the book's title from the original (The Feather Men). I came to my own conclusion that I don't feel you can have a retribution killing for something that happens in a war or military encounter, especially when the person being hunted down and killed later wasn't even the aggressor. This book discusses mostly a group of ex-Special Forces and SAS soldiers who are being targeted and killed by professional assassins.The group would be paid one million dollars for each confirmed revenge killing, which included video recording of the target being accused of the death of the appropriate son.

I found this book in a NY Times book review section on mysteries and did not know it was about Oman, when I started to read it. In 2011, Fiennes stated in an interview with The Daily Beast: "I had chose [have chosen] to change my mind from time-to-time in terms of answering people, and at the moment, I choose to say that the book, and therefore the film, are total fiction. What Fiennes somehow manages to do is humanize everyone, even when there is no doubt which side he is on. The Feather Men determined that the deaths of the four SAS was not so accidental… and spent years hunting down the killers.Once I’d grasped the plot, I surprised myself in realising that I had actually begun to rather enjoy it; that is if a reader, who in this situation is essentially a voyeur, can actually claim to be favorably interested in seedy sex, brutal violence and carefully calculated cold blooded killing.

In that respect, the film is a complete turnaround of the book, where the villains are made to appear righteous. The background was this: Amr bin Issa, sheikh of a tribe in Oman, had lost four sons in his country's civil wars.

And partly because of that no doubt, I approached it at first with misconception, as a kind of action thriller, a bit like a Jason Bourne story. It was even made into a movie - The Killer Elite - but that movie veered far away from this narrative. Well in Killer Elite even Chairman Mao is quoted, “In given conditions a bad thing can lead to good results. For books sent within the UK, there will be no extra charge for books up to 2kg and are sent by Royal Mail. One of the overriding philosophies of the book Shantaram is that it is possible to do the ‘wrong’ thing for the ‘right’ reasons.